Interviewer: This Carol Shkolnik and I am sitting in the living room of Harold Flox during an interview for the Columbus Jewish Historical Society. And this is June the 8th, 1998. Harold and I have known each other for about a million years and it sounds like we agreed that tonight Harold is going to talk about the old Jewish neighborhood and business around Wager Street. So, why don't we just jump right in, Harold, tell me what it was like living on Wager Street as far back as you can remember.
Flox: Well, I was basically, I was born on Parsons Avenue which was one block away, but all my memories from childhood stem from Wager Street. Wager Street was a close-knit community and it was a block off of Parsons Avenue and I'm speaking of the street starting from Livingston Avenue to Columbus Street.
Interviewer: Okay, hold on a second. So, Wager Street from Livingston down to Columbus, tell me more. Approximately what year did you move to Wager Street, or guess.
Flox: I moved to Wager Street in the early 1930s. It was approximately 1932, 1933, and we lived in a house a few doors away from 800 Wager Street. It was,
I forgot the exact number, but it was seven eighty something. Then when I was five years old we moved into the house at 800 Wager Street which most of my memories go from and all my friends there. Most of the neighborhood was Jewish. I would say 90 percent was Jewish. We were mainly children of immigrant parents. The immigrant parents spoke Yiddish amongst themselves mainly and a few filtered down to the children and sometimes they would speak in Yiddish but generally the children would answer in English. We went to a public school, and if anything we came home and corrected our parents' English and their manner of speaking. And as they began to assimilate with the community their English improved also and by talking with the children. Because if my mother spoke to me in Yiddish, I answered her in English. So as a result she was learning English from me.
Interviewer: And the parents seemed to want to do that. They wanted to learn English from their children, correct?
Flox: Right. They wanted, they emphasized the education to us and they were very loving and caring at the time jobs were hard to come by and mainly the women would stay home and raise the children and the father would go to work. What, we used to go to, many people had jobs on Market, on Central Market and in fact, my neighbors, the Gurvitzes lived next door to us, and I, as a small boy, worked on the market with them. There was true competition because you would have series of stalls. Every one would be a private little vendor selling their wares and your competition for prices and the hawking of their wares and yelling out the price of a pound of grapes to compete with the person next door or down the street. So it was truly a free enterprise system at that time, and most of your shopping was done in the downtown area of Columbus.
My father was a tailor at the Union Company. He had fought in the first World War and he lost his left thigh, the muscle, and he lived his whole life and he was a very gung-ho veteran. He marched in every veterans' parade. At that time came November 11th, the stores would let all the veterans go and they would have a large parade downtown with the veterans marching past the Statehouse reviewing stands there. My father died in 1945, and my mother passed away in 1944.
When we were growing up, the neighborhood, if you can just imagine, there were just a series of duplex houses, what they call just duplex houses now where they had two units in one building, up and down. Many were rentals and many were privately owned. And the community was a mixture of wealth because mainly your Orthodox Jews wanted access to the synagogues which were around Washington and Donaldson Street, and they wanted to walk there. So they were reluctant to move even if they had made more money, they were reluctant to move out to suburbs because they really couldn't practice their orthodoxy. They would more or less turn into conservative or reform because they would have to ride to shul on Shabbos. So, you had a mixture; you could have somebody that was on the brink of welfare and you could have somebody who was wealthy living side-by-side.
Interviewer: And there were Jewish people among the ones almost on welfare and also among the wealthy in the same neighborhood?
Flox: Yes, that's right. One thing about the neighborhood when I say it was close-knit, it was, everyone was, you could walk down the street and say hello to everyone. And the women on Shabbos would walk down, there'd be another woman sitting on the porch and say "Come and have a glass of tea and cookies" and they'd spend their Shabbos afternoon visiting along the street with the different ladies would invite someone in if they saw someone coming down the street, "Come in and have tea", and create the little gossip and so forth. But with all the friendliness came the, they could in effect be nosy too. But to me nosiness and friendliness go hand in hand. I mean they knew your business but they were there to help you if you were down and out and so forth.
And the whole neighborhood was a babysitter. Most of the kids would congregate on the corner of Wager and Forest Street. We'd play kick the stick, kick the can, hide and go seek, go sheepy go, and we had all kinds of games going on to entertain ourselves. This was the pre-television era.
Beckmans had a chicken business, a thriving chicken business going back in the alley which we nicknamed Beckman's Alley which extended, it was between Ann and Wager Street and the alley length ran between Forest and Sycamore. Harry Beckman had a thriving chicken business; he dealt with the gentile trade and he would also provide some Jewish customers with the kosher chickens. There was also Ben Rosen who had a chicken operation, and he had stands on East Market and North Market, and I worked with his wife on East Market selling chickens which were gentile, they were non-kosher chickens. What we did as kids, we realized that we didn't have all the material things, and we strived to help out with the finances in the home. So as a result I started working when I was 10.
I ended up working at Gilbert's Shoe Store when I was 12. At that time the war was starting and there were many, many Jewish children that went to work for Harry Gilbert. We didn't make very much but we got to know how to deal with the public and how to treat and say "yes sir" and "no ma'am" and "thank you", and all our manners were basically learned by dealing with the public at Gilbert Shoe Store.
There were many kosher butcher shops around. The closest one to me was Godofsky's at Beck and Parsons. There was Mendelman's on Livingston Avenue between Parsons and Wager Street. There was Mr. Nussbaum who had a fish market on Parsons Avenue which was a block away from Wager, and he was located between Forest and Columbus Street. Also there was Sam Schiff who dealt with a majority of the Orthodox Jews. He had a schoichet who came in and slaughtered, did the ritual slaughtering of the chickens. At that time the women would pick out their chicken live and they would take it home for Shabbos dinner, and they would sometimes they would have girls there who would pick the feathers from the chicken. But a lot of the women would take the chickens home and pick the feathers themselves and they would draw, clean the chicken themselves and kosher it by soaking it in water and salting it. The fish came in every Thursday for Mr. Nussbaum's store, basically from Lake Erie and the women would go over there and buy their fish for Shabbos. They would make gefilte fish on their own.
They spent a lot of time in the kitchen; they had time on their hands to do it. Of course, taking care of the kitchen, cooking, it was a full-time job for them. My mother would start her preparation for Shabbos early in the morning on Friday. It was a total ritual scene. Before Shabbos we always took our baths and everything smelled with the chicken cooking and, it had that Shabbos smell.
Interviewer: What did she do with the fish?
Flox: The fish? Well, she actually ground the fish and actually gefilte fish is made like in effect like a meatball. You had the fish, onions and egg and bread crumbs and so forth and you make your fish and kind of create a stew out of the bones and boil it and steam it. Sometimes the old fashioned ladies would stuff the fish heads, which I didn't go for, and the kids usually kind of rebelled from seeing a fish head on the plate there.
Interviewer: What did they stuff it with?
Flox: They stuffed it with the actual gefilte fish mixture which was the ground up fish flesh and, you know, the ingredients. One lady across the street was Mary Dolinger. She was in effect from the modern school and her gefilte fish was presented in a beautiful manner. She never used a head or the skin. She would basically create a gefilte fish that you would find in a Manischewitz jar today. But it was more yellow because it would have more eggs and she would have a slice of carrot on each piece of gefilte fish. And to me she was the prize gefilte fish maker for the street. And being an orphan when I was younger, different ladies would bring us different things to eat, and I always attributed a certain favorite food to that particular lady. And your grandmother, of blessed memory,
Mrs. Gurevitz, she made a cabbage borscht that was out of this world, and to me that was the favorite thing.
Interviewer: Now, how old were you when you became an orphan, so to speak?
Flox: Well, I was 14 when my mother died and I turned 16 when…
Interviewer: OK. Since we had a break I want to ask you one question I was thinking of when we were talking.
Flox: Sure.
Interviewer: You said it was very competitive on the market in terms of prices. Did that competition come back to the neighborhood or did people leave that behind when they came home? Some of the people were neighbors who competed on market.
Flox: That's true. From a child's standpoint I never overheard any animosity or anything like where people basically had their living to make and that was it. And that's how they just did their business. Most of, some of the consumers at the time, all their perishable goods, they couldn't, there was no refrigeration at that time where they could store perishable items, like your lettuce, tomatoes, and things like that. They had to be sold. Some of the customers would wait til 9 o'clock at night when they were closing so they could get the best prices. Because most people would bring back potatoes, onions, things that would, could, carrots, that could go ahead and be resold the next week. But most of your perishable foods and vegetables had to be sold that day. Especially if you were dealing in strawberries and things like that, they had to go.
People paid a certain tax to the city and then you'd see large city trucks go by cleaning up the market after they closed, 10 to midnight they'd be working, cleaning up the area. And it usually bordered from Main and Fifth Street all the way around down to State and Fourth Street. And Central Market was located where the bus station is located now, that block between Town and Rich Street. And your commission houses were mainly between Third and Fourth Street on Town Street.
Interviewer: They were close?
Flox: Oh, they were very close. Most of your vendors who had market stands would get their produce from the commission houses and sell it retail. They would get it at wholesale at the commission houses and sell it at retail.
Interviewer: What was it like in the winter time?
Flox: In the winter time it was very cold. It was very cold and people bundled up. In fact, I had this picture up on my wall, the Pickle Lady, and that's basically what you can see what was involved in how a person looked. He captured that; that's a lithograph from, a Rosenthal lithograph. It's called the Pickle Lady.
Interviewer: That's beautiful.
Flox: That's basically how they sat. All bundled up with a little awning to protect them from the rain and so forth, and their little scale hanging there to weigh the produce.
Interviewer: Tell me some of the people who had stands on market, and did people in one stand ever help each other in any way, running out of merchandise or maybe something else?
Flox: Well, that I really don't remember but I don't remember much about that. But I know when I worked on East Market when we were out of something, we'd say go some place else and see whether they had that. That was it. It wasn't a cutthroat kind of thing because everything just seemed to flow okay and everybody tried to do. When they sold out of merchandise they were out and that was it.
Interviewer: Tell me some of the people who worked on market for many years.
Flox: Well, most of the, the Gurevitzes; my next door neighbor was Meyer and Sara Gurevitz. They had a stand. Sara would never work on Shabbos, but I, Meyer did and Sam, her son, Sam. They were there.
I'm trying to think about the names now. Kessel, Nate Kessel was on market. And there were a Feinstein couple that was on market, that had a stand on market, a produce stand. There were many, I really can't, I've lost track of a lot of the names at there. I know the Rosens had chickens but they were on East Market. This was Ben and Mary Rosen. Marvin Rosen's father. Then we had, well that's about it from the market area. I know that Sid Mendelman was a butcher. And Godofsky who was a father of the present day owner of Martin's. Well, actually Martin's is not in existence any more. It's the Bexley Kosher Market that is run by Irv Szames. But Martin Godofsky's father was the one who had Godofsky's Market on Beck and Parsons Street. And right across the street from them was Ziegler's Drug Store.
Interviewer: You mentioned something about a lot of the houses, people rented and some of them owned. Did your family rent or did they own the house?
Flox: We rented. We rented.
Interviewer: Did the rent man come around to get the money?
Flox: No, but the insurance man did. The insurance man use to come and collect a quarter a week for a policy. The rental, we just went ahead and paid it, my father just paid it at that time was $30 a month for a three-room house. I mean a three-bedroom house, and they had a living room, a dining, and a kitchen, a full basement. My brother and I shared one bed in the back bedroom; my sister had the middle bedroom; and my mother and father had what we called front bedroom. We had coal a furnace and our chores around the house were basically to, my father would get up early in the morning and stoke the furnace and start it again so the house would be heated when we got out of bed. Our duty was to carry out the ashes which my brother and I loaded up from the basement in old bushel baskets and we would just set up a pile of ashes back by the alley and the city would come and pick it up. Sometimes in the winter when we had ice and snow we would use those ashes for traction. We would spread it out on the sidewalk, on the streets and so forth because you'd have some cinders left in there.
During the war when labor became scarce we had, they would just dump the coal in the back of the house. There were alleyways behind the streets and that was the access for commercial deliveries and say you'd buy a ton of coal and they would put the coal in the back alley and then my brother and I would hand carry the coal and dump it into the basement coal bin which would be near the furnace in the basement.
We had an icebox. We did not get our refrigerator until about 1938, we had our first refrigerator.
Interviewer: So what did that mean in terms of food? How did your mother shop?
Flox: Well, it was a daily shopping thing because there was no perishable, I mean you just couldn't keep things that long. The icebox, we would get one big block of ice in the summertime. You would try not to store too much. In the winter time we had what was called a window box which we basically fit into the window like what's an air-conditioner and we'd put all the milk and sour cream and so forth and anything we had to keep cold, would be kept in this window box which would be cold, and it was metal so it held the coldness so we used that in the winter time for our icebox. In the summer time we had a regular icebox where the iceman came in and brought ice, chunks of ice.
Interviewer: So, I know about the kosher grocery stores. Were there other grocery stores around if you didn't need meat or something kosher?
Flox: Yes, there were confectionaries. There was Miller's Confectionary which was right down the street, 18th and 4th Street. We had a Rice's Supermarket which was in effect, you would have to call more or less a convenience store in today's terms but it was called Rice's Supermarket and that was at Parsons and 4th. There was a big Bear that started down on Kossuth and Parsons.
And at that time during the was Mr. Nussbaum use to sell other products other than fish and sometimes he'd get angry because people for their soaps, powders and so forth would go to Big Bear to get the better price. But when there was rationing during the war and he- some times I would go in and ask him if he had a box of soap powder, he would go ahead and wrap it up in newspaper and told me to keep quiet and didn't want me to let out that he had soap powder because he wanted to keep it for his better customers. He didn't like that the ladies would go down to the supermarkets and if it became scare and they would come to shop. All we talking were a few cents difference on the product of a box of soap.
Interviewer: Did people go do those kinds of errands on foot most of the time?
Flox: Yes. Everything was basically on foot. Few people had cars. The car traffic, when I go back to the old neighborhood and I see the width of the street I can't believe it. To me when I was a child I thought it was always because it was a playground, but now if you can get one car down the street you're lucky. At that time there was not that much traffic. The Gurevitzes next door, they had a truck which they used for their business. Joe Steinberg had a car, where he lived in the double to south of me was Mr. Nussbaum's son-in-law and he had a car which was strictly a Sunday car. They took it out on Sunday and they drove it; had very small mileage on it. And most peoples' cars they kept them in the garages and used it strictly for pleasure travel like for Sunday or something. It was something they owned.
The Waitzmans had a tire store at Jackson and Parsons. They lived catty corner across the street. The Polings had a auto parts store which was at Parsons and Livingston also.
There were drug stores on the corner. There was Babb's and Leonard's. Babb's sold out to Joe Meyerson who was Armand Meyerson's father who went to school with me. He had the business there for many years until they tore it down and made room for Bobb's Chevrolet. The renovations were getting started, I'd say in the early 50s. Then there was Leonard's Drug Store and Leonard retired and Joe moved across the street where Leonard's was.
Then there was a gambling hall on the corner. It was called the 606 Club.
Interviewer: 606? Corner of what?
Flox: Which in fact was the grandparent of today's Liberty Club and 606 Club was a 606 cigar store and generally you'd have a front where there'd be a couple of cigar cases but in the back the guys would come and play poker and gamble.
Interviewer: Jewish men too?
Flox: Oh, this was, yes, it was Jewish men. It wasn't Jewish men too, this was a Jewish club. This was where, they had like a little peephole and Mike Schyne used to sit there. This was the Schyne twins and Harold Schyne's uncle who worked there and he would make salami sandwiches. We used to go there as kids and hand around there.
Interviewer: Did you know what was going on in the back?
Flox: Oh, we knew what was going on, sure. We knew what was going on. It definitely was a, but a lot of it was mainly a friendly type of gambling establishment. They would play cards for money which was illegal. Now my father and your grandfather, Meyer Gurevitz, they use to come, they had a regular Sunday night poker game at our house which, of course, they played with money and so forth. That was the standard thing.
Interviewer: Do you know how much they played for?
Flox: They played for dimes, quarters and so forth like that.
Interviewer: What did the women think about it?
Flox: The women became angry at times. One time your grandma came in and threw the cards all over the floor one time because I guess he was staying a little too late, your grandfather.
Interviewer: Didn't have anything to do with the money, it was how late is was.
Flox: Well, I don't know at that time, you know, that was it; it was anything even in today's deal. I don't think they had to go to gamblers anonymous any of them, but that was their pleasure, that was their entertainment. And the place would be full of smoke, cigar smoke and cigarettes and so forth.
Interviewer: Do you remember, did your parents and other people in the neighborhood talk about the old country a lot?
Flox: My father and my mother, they…my father use to tell me about the old country. He told me how he was a tailor's apprentice. He came over by himself though. He left the whole family and brothers and sisters and so forth and he came over in the early 1900s by himself which I now regret that I didn't ask him enough questions. But he fought in the Russian-Japanese War and then when he finished that war he came back and of course things weren't that great for Jewish people in the small shtetels around the larger cities. He came from the Kiev area. He came over by himself and he ended up in Toledo.
My mother was born in the Vilno area. She came over, she was married to someone and came over here and got a get. They brought her over here, the family so she could get a get.
Interviewer: Why? Tell me about that.
Flox: Well, my mother had mental problems at that time and they had to get a Jewish divorce. They brought her over and then she remarried a man named Hoffman. Whenever I inquired on the book, at that time divorces were a schanda (a shame.) I mean nobody spoke of them, especially among the older Jewish families it was unheard of. I didn't find out about my mother's situation until she had passed away. A neighbor had told me the story about my mother.
Interviewer: You mean about her having been married before?
Flox: And then my mother's second husband, the picture they use to keep on the wall, he was a very handsome guy, standing there in like a student's uniform and she always told me he was her brother when actually it was her second husband. My father was her third husband, and it was my father's first marriage. There again they were fixed up. They were married for some time. She didn't have children, and when she became pregnant with my sister she had us one, two, three. There was only one year between each of us.
Interviewer: Your sister is the oldest?
Flox: Yes, my sister is 71, my brother is 70 and I'm 69, give or take. Wait, I'll be 69 in another month or so but I'm just giving you a general outlay of what it was.
Interviewer: How did your dad end up in Toledo?
Flox: I'm sorry?
Interviewer: How did your dad end up in Toledo?
Flox: My dad ended up in Toledo, I don't know the exact thing. I know when he came back from the, I don't know if it was a friend of his or what but he just kept on going. He came into Newport News, Virginia when they shipped him back from France, he was wounded. He went to work to Toledo. He came down here and worked at the Union Company. He started in 1923. He started working at the Union Company in the alteration department as a tailor. He remained there for the rest of his life until his dying day, he passed away.
When my father died, my sister happened to be 18 so we were fortunate we didn't have to go to Bellefaire because we had a legal guardian which my father's boss, Mr. Benjamin H, so graciously accepted. He had become our legal guardian.
Interviewer: He had arranged for that after your mother died or what?
Flox: After my father died. He was my legal guardian. He did not have to raise us. All he had to do see, my sister, brother and I stayed in the house together.
Interviewer: Did Childrens' Services or anything come to the house?
Flox: No. I vaguely heard, well, welfare offered us something. But we didn't go for it. It wasn't something that was there. It was to a point that if we would have had to go that route we probably would have ended up in Bellefaire, which was the Jewish orphanage.
Interviewer: In Cleveland.
Flox: In Cleveland, Ohio. There was nothing like that in Columbus. But my sister was working at an insurance company. I was working, and at that time my fees at OSU were $45 a quarter. I went to work at Shoe Corp. and at Lazarus and pulling in $40 a week, so it was easy and also I was coming home where I ate and slept. At that time you were getting a second wave of immigrants who were the Holocaust survivors. They needed room. At that time the Agency started working and they were placing people in homes. So we had a couple of families living in our house where we sublet the place and helped pay our rent and so forth. Now that time our rent was $45 and we charged the people $45 to live in the house. They had full kitchen privileges and so forth. We were teenagers running around to basketball games and so forth like that and what have you. So we basically stayed there and slept and so forth. And they were nice people and we got along all right. In fact, the Glessers lived with us. This is Edith Glesser and her husband, and I think one was Irv and one was Abe Glesser. There was Irv and Sally, I mean Irv and Edith, and Abe and Sally.
Interviewer: You mentioned the Holocaust. What was it like in the neighborhood during the war when there had to have been some of the kids from the neighborhood overseas? What was it like?
Flox: Well, when people went to the service you mean?
Interviewer: Hmm-uh.
Flox: Well, your Uncle Sam. I'll never forget that. I'll remember your grandmother screaming her head off when she got the telegram that he was wounded. He had a serious wound in his shoulder and your father, I always call him Itzy.
Interviewer: A lot of people call him Itzy.
Flox: Louie was draft-deferred and Karen was born at that time, your cousin Karen was born.
Interviewer: Right. Who else, or who else do you remember from the neighborhood and were the families nervous? That's the kind of thing I'm looking for, you know how people were feeling?
Flox: Everybody was upset, you know, with the people away. We had one close death, I remember, this was Martin Godofsky's brother was killed. He had flown so many missions in the South Pacific and then when he came home he was on a training flight and the plane crashed in Florida.
Interviewer: Oh, my gosh.
Flox: And that was a tragedy. Also, Victor Levine's brother, Sam, was killed in the war at that time. The whole Jewish neighborhood spread over, through the whole southeast end of town. I would say it bordered from Fulton Street over to Linwood and then south to Whittier. Then you had a build-up of a neighborhood going south of Whittier Street along Champion, Wilson, Ohio Avenue.
Interviewer: That was later, wasn't it?
Flox: Yes. After the war Driving Park started to build up. At that time there were housing shortages. In fact, I can't even think of how all these people fit into one house. Most of the Jewish kids went to Livingston Avenue School and Heyl and Ohio Avenue School. The wave before us was closer to the Central High School district which were Fulton Street School and so forth. But when I was growing up most of the kids were going to Livingston Avenue Elementary and Heyl and Ohio. We went to a Hebrew school which was on Rich Street between Washington and Parsons Avenue. Across the street from the Hebrew school, this was an old mansion which was deteriorating basically but the Hebrew school was there, and across the street was Schonthal Center, which was the Jewish Community Center.
Interviewer: How many days a week did you go to Hebrew school?
Flox: I went to Hebrew school, we went to Hebrew school five days a week.
Interviewer: Really?
Flox: It was after school. It was very hard on us, going through a full day's school, waiting for an hour, riding the bus as they picked up all the kids.
Interviewer: School bus kind of thing?
Flox: The bus came along. Happy was the bus driver. We had a lot of fun and we were holy terrors on that Hebrew school bus. Some times he would screeched the bus to a halt, turn around and give us a look and we all of a sudden became little angels. Also going to school, even though we had so much love from the parents there was really not that many doting parents. I mean if you got hit by a teacher in those days I mean I'd come home and say, "Ma, the teacher hit me," and she'd say, "They should have hit you harder." And they let it go at that. I mean if I went through school today, I was a hyper kid, I'd probably be on medication and have all types of analysis and so forth, but here I am today I got through school, I got good grades, and everything was fine.
Interviewer: Now you have an interesting situation in, you know, having lost your parents, both of them. What was it like having your older sister in essence being the parent?
Flox: Well, that's why I admire her so much and why we are so close. Because in fact she became the balabusta of the house and what she said went. As a result with the parental authority gone and the mature individual out of the house, our house on Wager Street became basically the hangout for all the kids. In fact, all the boys would come over the house. The fact that all the boys were over the house, all the girls all of the sudden would come down to Wager Street to see the boys under the guise of seeing another girl living on Wager Street. Evelyn Steinberg all of a sudden became very popular. These girls would come to see Evelyn because they would naturally be walking by our house where all the boys were.
Interviewer: Was there any kind of stuff going on inside the house?
Flox: No, no, at that time we really, there was a certain code that basically among the Jewish kids that everything was on the up and up. You didn't mess around so to speak.
Interviewer: Did my grandmother come over and check on you when there were a lot of kids over?
Flox: No, no, not actually, she did not. I don't think we made that type of a ruckus. We never had complaints from that end. We had complaints some times parents of the other kids would come looking, they knew where to come look for the kids. Come drag them out of the house. Sometimes they would come and check; they would lie to their parents and say "I'm going over to Harold's and Irv's", and they wouldn't be going there. They'd be running around some place else, but still they'd be peeking their head through the window looking for their kid when they really weren't there.
Interviewer: What was it like when Blanche was dating.
Flox: Blanche met Charlie when Charlie lived right down the street. This is Charlie Young. They were teenage, my sister was about 17, 18 years old and she got married when she was 22.
Interviewer: So she waited until you guys were old enough?
Flox: Basically, and Charlie finished dental school too. He was a dentist at an early age; he graduated dentistry. Then the Korean War was starting. They got married in 1949, they're going to have their 50th next year. They had an open wedding which was very unusual, and they were the second wedding for Rabbi Rubenstein. At that time they were making plans for Agudas Achim to be located in Bexley, so there was quite, if I can think through my young mind, a political play there, a power play so to speak. Rabbi Hirschsprung was ousted.
Interviewer: Why?
Flox: Well, the way I felt, what I can remember is that Rabbi Hirschsprung was not going to fit in well the new Agudas Achim was going towards the conservative end. At that time, even at that time, many of the youngsters, many of the young girls there were saying, "I'm not going to sit up in the balcony and watch my husband flirt with some other women on the other side of the balcony." They wanted to sit with the husband and daven with the husbands in schul. It's my recollection that the new Agudas Achim, they were going to have mixed seating, a portion of the schul was going to be mixed seating in the center part and the women who chose to would sit on the one side and the men who chose to sit by themselves would sit on the other. I don't think Hirschsprung was in that, you know.
Interviewer: After he was ousted did he go somewhere else?
Flox: He got a congregation in Iowa some place. I was friendly with his daughter Nessie Hirschsprung who was my peer, graduated from my high school. In fact, I had my yearbook here. I can show you some pictures. Most of the, as I say, there was a large, South High School was the school to be outside of Bexley. Bexley was the more affluent and more conservative and reform Jews lived in the Bexley area where still most of your orthodox were centered in the area, the boundaries I told you, before Driving Park began thrive when I was in high school. Many kids still went to South High School from the Driving Park area. That included Geers, Berkeley, Lilley Avenue, Kelton and those streets in there.
Beth Jacob moved from Donaldson, they moved on to Bulen. In fact, your grandmother, this was after your grandfather passed away, I think your grandfather passed away in 1951, if I'm not mistaken.
Interviewer: Yes.
Flox: 1951. Your grandma… with the parents at home I mean they were having children, you, just to give an example in your own family. I mean there was Louie and Jeanette, and they had Karen and they were living with your grandparents. And then Zalmie came along, Sam, and Sonny. I remember her bringing Beverly home with her. Beverly was the prettiest little baby ever you want to see. They were living with the grandparents. Eventually they wanted to be on their own. As people started making money, we were coming out of the Depression. Housing became available. Also, we came into the credit era where people could go ahead and buy a home with a small down payment, could get what was called a GI loan. If you were a veteran you were entitled to buy a home with a small down payment and as a result rather than pay rent these people started applying their rental money on to homes and so forth, and bought their own homes.
Interviewer: How did the Jews and the gentiles get along down in the Wager Street area?
Flox: Well, we had basically, when you had the kids you had your basic anti-Semitic tirades at times which some times I can attribute to being learned in school or through their churches and so forth, you know, I was called a Christ- killer at times and things like that. But it was nothing really overt. We always handled it ourselves. The gentiles who lived on our block were wonderful. They were wonderful people; we got along wonderful with them. You know, if you knew somebody it was just something where you had just some kids who would say "Oh there are some Jew boys walking down the street" or something like that and go run after us or try and get in some fights and so forth.
Interviewer: But, you didn't do it, you didn't fight?
Flox: Oh, we had some fights some times. Sure, sure, you had some fights. That was just the fact that…at that time there were people saying "Damn foreigners". Anybody who was ethnic at all, Italian or Hungarian or whatever they had a slur name for any ethnic group that you wanted to see. You know, I mean it was just part of the standard lingo, so it was a macho image or whatever it was.
People would use those words or some times they would think of them. But even when I, on the transcript of my grades from OSU, now I graduated in 1952 and in the corner it said Jewish.
Interviewer: Really?
Flox: Yes, it was on there.
Interviewer: Would you remember if that was on your application?
Flox: Applications to jobs?
Interviewer: Well, no, when you applied to get into OSU.
Flox: Oh, sure, they asked you what your affiliation is.
Interviewer: Interesting.
Flox: Oh, yes, and you put down, so if you didn't say either, you could put down you were an agnostic or none or whatever, but you, I never hid my Jewishness and I never hid my Jewishness in the service.
Interviewer: Did a lot of people miss school for the Jewish holidays other than Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur?
Flox: Most of the kids in South High School would take off for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Then they began to question if so many more kids would take off for Succoth and Simcas Torah and Pesach and so forth, all your normal regular holidays, and the fact that so many Jewish kids went to school because they didn't want to miss school, some of the attendance teachers began to doubt the legitimacy of the kids' excuse. The fact, they would say "Well, Benny Cohen was in school today, why weren't you?". You had to answer in that respect. But most, not blowing my own horn, but most of your Jewish kids excelled in studies and they, I'd say far percentage, nothing is a 100 percent, but your students were dominant in the school as far as activities and I can show you in here the debate team at South High School was basically, although there was Ella Fisher. Victor Levin....
Interviewer: Some of this would be interesting, so why don't you look at it and Harold's opening up a yearbook and he's going to tell us some of the things that are in there.
Flox: Well, what I have here is my graduation class from Livingston School. Now there were about 30 people, but right here I can show who's in our class. There's Bobby Eisenman. There's Louis Waitzman. There's yours truly right over there. This is Ronald Rosen. There's Roslyn Edelsberg Sonenstein. This is Lois Canowitz, I think she married a guy named Solomon at that time. Now this was just from our 6A grade class. At that time they had 6B and 6A class. You can see on there, on our…. In South High School, we can go along here. We have Roslyn Edelsberg and this is Betty Edelson, Shirley Douglas, Sylvia Douglas rather, Sonia Cunix, Shirley Fisher, and Sonia Kriss, Betty Lieberman.
Interviewer: Looks like you have a lot of signatures in there, or did people sign their names on the picture?
Flox: People signed their name on the picture at that time. We did that, yes, Okay.
Interviewer: No, what I mean is did they sign it in your yearbook or did they sign it before it was printed?
Flox: It was signed before it was printed. We signed our name and turned it into the yearbook there.
Interviewer: I see.
Flox: Yeah. There's Mort Rising.
Interviewer: Who were the highest achievers at South High at the time? Like who was your, do you remember?
Flox: OK, from the honor society I can you tell you we have pictures in the back here. [pages flipping] Okay. There's Shirley Fisher who was on the honor society in mid term. Here's Armand Meyerson. Here's Marilyn Mintzes who is Marilyn Mintzes Skilken now. This is Lee Skilken. This is Nessie Hirschsprung, the rabbi's daughter.
Interviewer: Were the Skilkens high school sweethearts? Did Lee and Marilyn date in high school?
Flox: Lee and Marilyn dated in junior high school.
Interviewer: In junior high?
Flox: In fact, I remember when Marilyn came to Roosevelt Junior High School in the seventh grade. She came, I think, from New Rochelle, New York, and I was smitten with her, the new girl in town. But she was going she was going with Lee Skilken in the eighth grade, and they went together all the way through college and got married.
Interviewer: That's incredible.
Flox: That was. This is Jerry Papier. This is Larry Papier, and this is a cousin of Larry Papier's on that one there.
Interviewer: Interesting. Another thing while you're looking through, you talk about playing stickball and all those other things on the corner, were those all boys, or were there boys and girls in those games?
Flox: Well, no, mainly boys. Most of your sports were segregated. The girls would play hide and go seek with us some times you know or they would play that type of game. But actual sports, we had a basketball hoop in the back of our garage and that was strictly all male. Baseball in the street was strictly all boys, and when we played football was all boys. There was no such thing as a coed type of sport in those days.
Interviewer: You didn't have to stop with the yearbook. I was just thinking about that because you were talking about the kids. Are there more things you want to tell about for posterity here, feel free. It looks like you saved some old cards?
Flox: Yes. There were some old cards that I had. I always talk about my bar mitzvah. This is Nona Rosen granulations at that time when I was there. This one is from Rosalie Lieberman Greenberg. She has Centner's Interiors. Then I had a card I remember, your cousin, Mary Dolinger, who got me a wallet when I graduated. There it is.
Interviewer: "Lots of love, best wishes on your graduation, the Dolingers." How nice.
Flox: That was, we had, here's Maxine Weisman Greenberg. This is Maryanne Wilkins. She is now married to Bogante who had, oh I forgot the name of the men's clothing store they had here for a while. It's no longer in existence. This is Shirley Young. Here's Dick Cohen. He messed up the whole yearbook. He still says he didn't do it, but he wrote his name across his forehead. I always have to show him. Every time we have a reunion or we start talking about it, he denies it, but I have the proof here.
Interviewer: Who was the first person from the neighborhood who really made good? That everybody wanted to claim. Was there somebody like that? Anybody that became real famous or real rich or something?
Flox: From our neighborhood?
Interviewer: Yeah.
Flox: Well, all I can say is that everybody basically succeeded. My brother-in-law became a dentist. He was a prominent children's dentist for years. He's retired now. He made it. I'm not going to count anyone's money. I'm not going to do that. Betty Steinberg who married Joe Nichols. I remember when he was from the neighborhood, he was not from Wager Street, I remember Dick Solove. Dick Solove became a big, he left the pharmacy business. He graduated in pharmacy; he worked at Cooper's Drugs at that time. Cooper's was on the corner of Ohio and Whittier Street. Betty married Joe Nichol and they ended up owning Eastmoor Pharmacy here. I don't think anybody became…Armand Meyerson became a doctor in the Cleveland area. Armand is, well, he's sick now. He's confined to a wheelchair. Here's a picture of our 50th reunion and this is Armand Meyerson there.
Interviewer: Oh my. You had a good turnout. What year was this?
Flox: This was 1947.
Interviewer: You just had your 50th last year.
Flox: We had our 50th last year, that's right.
Interviewer: Where was it? Where did you hold your reunion?
Flox: We had our reunion there, it used to be a Holiday Inn, at 256 and 70 expressway.
Interviewer: You had a real good turnout at this. That's wonderful.
Flox: Now this is a combination of the January and the June class. That's one thing too we had that they don't have. Today they have just the one year. As a result, see they have a cutoff date so that you have immature kids going, like at one end of the spectrum, someone was born September 30th, he gets into a class, and a person born October 1st has to wait until next September to go. So meanwhile that person who is October 1st is in with somebody who say is going to be seven October 1st and here's a six year old who just turned six September 30th so there's a year's difference between the kids right there in the class. In the old days they had a 6A, a 1B, and a 1A. You had a February session and then you had a June. Therefore, you had age, and especially when they were growing up like that, they were more compatible with each other agewise. So this time the teachers have the dilemma where somebody is too immature for certain class. It depends on what month they were born in. They can't catch up; they just don't have that many months getting up to that standard there. So a lot of kids are behind. You find a lot of kids are graduating, I graduated, I was 17, and I was going to be 18 the following August after I graduated in June. But some of these other kids are 18, 19 years old, they're graduating high school.
Interviewer: You told me that you and your wife were high school sweethearts, and that was before we talked on the tape. Tell me again about that.
Flox: My wife, Henrietta Grinker, and I were going together and dating. She was with the Phi Gamma sorority and we had a group called the PALS, a social group, which was non-fraternity, from OSU. We had our organization here that was called Pi Alpha Lambda which we called the PALS. We put on what we called Stunt Night at the time. We use to go to the Roosevelt Junior High auditorium. We competed with the different sororities and fraternities and so forth where they had different skits. We put on a parody of Hamlet and this is where, this picture here, this is Bob Eisenman and Otto Schwartz, my brother, Irv Flox, Dick Goldstein, Irv Berlinger, Marv Rosen, Marv Greenberg, Bill Hurwitz, he changed his name to Herbert. And this is Jerry Bloom, and Sid Wolpert, yours truly, Menasha Goodman, and Jerry Goldfarb.
Interviewer: Oh my word.
Flox: And this is where we won the award for the Stunt Night.
Interviewer: I think they were still having that for a while.
Flox: This is pictures at Glengarry Pool, and different social functions where we had dances. This is Henrietta and I dancing here. What happened, in the 50s, to make a long story short, when I went into the service we broke up and I went my way and she went hers. She married a guy from Columbus and ended up in Oklahoma. He passed away in his early 40s and this was in 1974. She came back for a wedding which was her niece who was Lois Schecter who was Sylvia and Marty Schecter's daughter. She came back for that wedding and the following month is, my niece, Beth Ann was getting married. So we're talking 25 years ago. So we started seeing each other. One thing led to another and we got married, and now we've been living happily ever after into old age..
Interviewer: How old were the children?
Flox: Her children were already in college. One was already out working. The boy was working and the daughter was just finishing up college. She came here in on her own and we just got married.
Interviewer: Did you ever think you'd get married when you waited that long?
Flox: Well, I didn't think so. I didn't think so. But this came back, just happened. This again was 25 years ago. We just decided and it's worked out.
Interviewer: Heard a lot of stories like that.
Flox: We're going with the ups and downs of it. Right now she's not feeling that well. We're overcoming that battle.
Interviewer: Any other kinds of things you'd like to talk about? Wager Street? Businesses?
Flox: Well, it was an era of small businesses. The big discount operations started right after the war which kind of destroyed your small kinds of businesses and your individual, what they call small businesses now, which to me is like a misnomer when they talk out of Washington where we're giving this for small business. And a small business is somebody with under 500 employees and is considered a small business. To me what we went through in our era in the Depression years were basically mom-and-pop stores. What they call today mom-and-pop stores. Where you had your single proprietor and had a few employees working for you. You know, not more than ten, was considered a small business.
On interesting thing I can tell you about Schottenstein Stores. At that time there were the blue laws where stores could not sell merchandise on Sundays. I mean they were shut up tight. They've since been proven unconstitutional. But at that time when the war started Schottenstein's was the only store open on Sundays because Mr. Schottenstein, he wouldn't put on a light until after the Sabbath started. This was in the South end store, and they lived on 18th Street. You're talking about roughly people amongst poor. I mean if they were Orthodox or whatnot. This was on 18th Street. They were open on Sunday. Shoe rationing came about; at that time they declared shoe rationing. Schottenstein was the only store open, and they chose Sunday to announce shoe rationing because all the stores were closed. And Schottenstein's was mobbed that day. They practically sold out every pair of shoes that were in the store there on the day, you know, when the war started on that. He used to deal mainly on Saturday nights after Shabbos with a lot of the farm community, the people living around the Circleville area, Lockbourne area. There were at that time many farmland in Columbus, and they used to deal with Schottenstein. My sister use to work there at the store. I never worked at Schottenstein's. My employment was always through Gilbert's and then Lazarus and Shoe Corporation of America. That's where I got my field at.
Interviewer: So, it sounds like a lot of people from the neighborhood put themselves through Ohio State? Worked and put themselves through college?
Flox: Oh, yes. I'd say the majority of the kids did that. They were working and they could, and the fees were not that exorbitant even if you, I'm trying to put everything into perspective. A kid going to college today cannot go out and get himself a $300 a week job. I mean pulling $300 a week for himself. It's next to impossible and still go to school. He can't do it. So as a result they rely on student loans and things like that. And now you just read in the paper where the fees have gone up now, I think the annual cost is going to be about 3000 a year for OSU. At that time too most kids went to OSU. I think OSU was in my home town and it was a highly rated university. I was fortunate, I consider myself fortunate in my situation especially, that it was located here in Columbus, Ohio. That's how it goes.
Unless you have other questions, I don't know what else I can tell you. The only other thing I can say was that life was much simpler then and most of your, from the, from my end of it, I was a first generation American. My peers were mainly first generation Americans. Most of the parents, I could say, 80 percent of our parents were foreign born.
Interviewer: Mostly from Russia and Poland I would imagine.
Flox: Russia and Poland. Yes, that was the wave of immigrants were from Russia and Poland. At that time it went back and forth. Some times it was Russia and some times it was Poland, but it was generally from eastern Europe. It was part of the eastern European influx of Jews which started basically from the early nineteen hundreds to the late 20s. The next wave of immigrants came in after the Holocaust.
Interviewer: Well, I thank you for sharing all these memories for the Historical Society. I think a lot of people will enjoy listening to them. You may find them on the world wide web at some point after it's transcribed because the Historical Society does have a web page, and so the ones that are transcribed are put on there. If you have access to the Internet or want to go to the library you can find the home page and read some of them. I thank you again very much.
Flox: Maybe I'll find a long lost relative. Who knows?
Interviewer: A lot of people do that.
Flox: Although I did try to find a Flox in the New York area directory. There was only one and I called and they thought I was from the FBI or something and hung up the phone on me. They didn't see anything about the similarity or the rarity of the spelling of our name which is F-L-O-X which is really rare. There are plenty of Flaxes and Foxes but no Floxes. And Flox is Yiddish for flax.
Interviewer: I see.
Flox: My father came over with that name, he didn't change it, that was it. I want you have the last word, Carol.
Interviewer: Well, the last word I'm supposed to have is to say this concludes our interview on June the 8th 1998 and this is Carol Shkolnik signing off with Harold Flox, and thank you very much.
Transcribed by Toba Feldman
